


questa storia che senso non ha

by eunoise



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Gen, Multi, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eunoise/pseuds/eunoise
Summary: "Judges, coaches, commentators, spectators, competitors, fans - their definition of perfection is once against made and remade around Viktor’s body and the way it moves as he is welcomed by the ice."Or: The making and unmaking of Viktor Nikiforov(feat. Viktor's emotionally incompetent parents, Viktor's dog before Makkachin, and Viktor's life before Yuuri)





	

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this because i am weak and couldn't help myself and then i couldn't stop and now this is a thing that exists

**_First._ **

 

They say that Viktor Nikiforov is made of ice.

They say his skin is made from ice crystals and his eyes were made from the color of light as it passes through an iceberg floating in the sea and his hair is made from the same shocking white as a the first snowfall of the season.

He is an ice sculpture - elegant, delicate, the eye-catching centerpiece of any room he decides to grace with his presence.  

But Viktor Nikiforov is made of other things too.

He is made of white walls and a big empty house with a legacy almost too large for it to contain. He is made of the crystal chandeliers that hang precariously from the ceiling and at night he would dream of them falling, falling, falling and pinning him to the cold hardwood floors that have imperfections buffed out weekly, twice weekly if they have company. He is made of mirrored surfaces and glass edges and metallic indifference. He is made of calculated smiles curved around the rim of a crystal glass of white wine held by manicured fingers and veiny hands carved from marble. He is made of a laugh like icicles and bespoke suits and careful manipulations disguised a talk between close friends.    

He is made from a man and a woman and the portrait hanging above the fireplace in the front parlour. The man in it is tall, handsome, he wears suits tailored to his strong, slim frame like a second skin and few people have ever seen him wear anything else. (Viktor Nikiforov is not one of these people.) His blonde hair is slicked back to perfection and his blue eyes are welcoming, but cold. He rests his arm around the shoulders of a woman so beautiful it is not possible that she exists. But there she is, wrapped in a royal blue gown that pools on the hardwood floors. Her blonde hair, impossibly lighter than the man’s, flows down to the small of her back in gentle waves. Her green eyes are so pale they almost seem white and her skin so fair that she glows.

He is the child resting in the woman’s arms, less than four and older than two but just barely, and even at that age it is clear to see that this child has only inherited the best from his parents. You could see the father in the shade of blue in his eyes and his mother in the impossibly-lighter-still color of his hair. You can see his father in the boy’s posture and see his mother in the already elegant line of his neck. You can see the parents in the way the boy is carved, beautiful and classic and able to withstand a thousands of years and not crumble. But while the man is granite and the woman marble, the boy is carved from ice, able to be made and made again.  

While the man and woman’s smiles are calculated into perfect curves that whisper of something secret, close-mouthed and superior, the boy’s smile is open. Shaped like a heart.

One day, years after his making and a decade before his unmaking, Viktor is told to take what he is made of and pour it into his skating and that is where you find true beauty. He tries this, but despite his awards and his trophies that build him and build him and tell him otherwise, when he watches himself skate he sees white walls and crystal chandeliers and silk shirts and the family portrait hanging in a silver frame above a fireplace that is rarely used. There is no beauty in that.

He gets a new coach. Whoever watches that skating and sees beauty in it is an idiot. They’ve never seen true beauty before.

Viktor intends to show them. Teach them.

Viktor takes what he is made of - takes the empty house and the curated museum of paintings in the front parlour and the delicate trinkets made to look at but not touch - and he empties himself of them. He removes everything that is not the story he needs to tell and the emotions he needs to show and he skates.

He can’t get rid of the ice and he doesn’t want to. The ice can’t get rid of him and it doesn’t want to and when Viktor leaps in the air, he is set free by it and when he lands the ice is always there to welcome him home.

(The Viktor-of-Now doesn’t know, not really, what it is like to be set free and he’s not quite sure if he can grasp being welcomed home. The Viktor-Who-Was-Made-and-Unmade understands the feelings as _itterasshai_ and _okaeri._ But for the Viktor-of-Now, this is enough.)

 

_..._

 

Viktor doesn’t understand things in words. Not to say he is illiterate or anything like that, his grades certainly say otherwise, but his first language is skating, motion, not language. Not Russian, not English, not even (eventually) clumsy Japanese. He constructs his world around skating. The axis around which his reality shifts.

He understands math in terms of point deductions and 1.1 multipliers and +3 GOE. He understands science in terms of rotations and gravity and hydrogen bonding. He translates literature into choreography. He writes metaphors into the bend of his wrist and the turn of his head. The words _inciting incident, rising action,_ and _climax_ dance through his head as he plans jumps and spins and steps. He takes the hero’s journey and fits it into four minutes and thirty seconds exactly and it earns him bronze and silver and gold.

He understands the world through action and action is how the world understands him.

_(“Should I just kiss you?” “No!”)_

This is how he shows his love. For what exactly, he could never quite pin down.  

 

_..._

 

His parents love him, of course. 

This is an answer to a question that does not need to be asked, but is asked anyway. Not in words, because no one has the courage to ask in words, but Viktor is trained in seeing emotions unsaid. So he can see it.

The question.

( _“Do your parents love you?”)_

He can see it in the slight downturn of  the lips on the driver’s face as she picks him up from school to go to practice. Can see it as the eyes follow the line of Viktor’s father’s hand on his shoulder, an awkward weight that Konstantin Nikiforov has not had time to refine into the image of a father familiar enough with his son to be comfortable touching him. Can see it in the tilt of the head and the narrowing on the eyes as Yevgeniya Nikiforova reminds her son to stand straight then says nothing more to him for three days.

But his parents attend every competition. He can see them, shining and white in the stands like a beacon. His father rescheduled meetings and his mother pushed back a gallery opening to sit in the stands of a public ice rink and watch their six year old son win gold in a local competition. When they can’t make it to the Junior Grand Prix Finals in Colorado Springs when he is fourteen, they hold a private viewing in their home, inviting their business partners to watch their son win bronze and they moved heaven and Earth to see him win silver at Worlds in Tokyo when he is eighteen.

_(They are there for him in Sochi when he wins his gold medal and in Yoyogi for Worlds when he wins another._

_“Congratulations, Vitya,” Konstantin says at dinner. His hairline is receding and Viktor fears the worst._

_“Will you send this season’s medals to us too?”_

_“Will you want them? None of them are silver.”_

_“I’ve been redecorating. Gold will fit into the color scheme now, don’t worry.”)_

Every report card is hung on a fridge with a platinum magnet his mother ordered just for that. His best drawings from childhood are framed besides early Mondrians and Aivazovskys and Nikiforovas.  

His mother saw him looking at pictures of poodles on his laptop one day and for his next birthday there is the most perfect poodle in the world waiting for him outside his room. His collar is made of Italian leather and his dog food is doggy gourmet. Viktor names the dog Kapochin and falls in love instantly.

His father keeps Viktor’s first medal - a dinky little thing made of plastic coated in now worn bronze paint - hung in his office at work.

Viktor can count on one hand the times his parents have said the words, “I love you.”

( _Maybe this is where he learned it. The idea was passed onto him in his perfect genes. Love is rearranging your world to fit someone else into it. You don’t need anything more._ )

 

_…_

 

Viktor is ten when he is sent to live in Saint Petersburg, where he will be trained by the best of the best with the best of the best. The parting is not as harsh as some of his future rinkmates implied when he made his decision. He loves his parents and his parents love him, but neither side has ever been particularly attached. 

This is what Viktor wants more than anything in the world.

They let him have it.

He  devotes more time to his skating. His rinkmates joke about getting him a cot at the rink so he can sleep in the middle of all his skating. Hiis constant rotation of coaches scream at him to, “Go home, for God’s sake, you foolish boy! Go have a life!”

 _But this is my life,_ he wants to say, because Viktor doesn’t understand this concern. Love is devoting your entire life to something, because it is your life, now and forever.

But then he considers. Reevaluates and recalculates. Alexei won a gold medal at Senior Worlds with a program made of youthful indiscretion and wild, uninhibited joy. _This may be good for my skating,_ Viktor thinks. _After all, how can I tell a story if I cannot understand it?_ Having a life may be beneficial in the long run.

( _While Yuuri trains with Minako, Viktor offered his services to Yuuko as a skate instructor. They call him ‘sensei.’ He doesn’t speak these children’s language, but you don’t need to know Japanese or Russian to learn the language of ice and as these kid’s clumsily step towards something approaching grace, he smiles through the ceiling into the sky._

_Ah, Viktor thinks as he listens to the children laughing and falling behind him, this is what I’ve been missing.)_

He makes friends at school who know nothing about ice skating. He joins a club that does not require much time from him and mostly just involves sitting in a room and listening to teenagers debate their music preferences for an hour every other week. He charms every girl and boy with even the vaguest interest in him. The girls think he’s handsome and they trade hair care tips and little laughs about nothing in between the softer and rougher kisses. The boys think he’s pretty and they share little laughs about nothing in between the softer and rougher kisses.

And somewhere between the leap and the landing, he falls in love with love. With the exhilaration of a first kiss and secret smiles across the classroom and the flimsy excuses to spend more time together. His coach, and he finally settled on a single coach -  Yakov Feltsman is a large man who seems to shout more than speak, but only around Viktor, and pushes back at Viktor as much as Viktor pushes back against him and they find a middle somewhere - lectures him when he finally appears at practice. Yells at him when he spots him lingering in front of the rink with his significant other of the week. Grits his teeth in frustration when he sees Viktor perform perfectly despite not having shown in face at the rink in three days.  

When he is sixteen, he choreographs his last junior short program about his first kiss and wins gold. He choreographs his last junior free skate to the story of young love, the burst of exhilaration, then tragic boredom, lamenting the fleeting nature of romance before finding new love at the climax. He empties himself of everything but those stories.

Katya, five years into a relationship with a female hockey player from Canada, tells him that the story is not as universal as Viktor seems to think. She laughs and the sound is sharp.

( _“Don’t date Viktor Nikiforov, he’ll break your heart.” “Go for it, it’s fun having your heart broken by him.” “It’s doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s nice having someone that prett_ _y pay attention to you, isn’t it?”)_

 

…

 

Viktor is twenty when the world shifts underneath his feet.

When he sees his mother and father walking up to him at Russian Nationals before the skaters even begin performing (he’s set to perform fifth, right after the current reigning Russian champion), he knows something is wrong. He knows that they are there because they have never missed Russian nationals and they never will for as long as they live, but they only ever come to him after the award ceremony.

“Vitya,” his father begins. “We thought it was best to tell you in person.” The hand on his shoulder is awkward and rough, contrasting with the elegant lines and softness of the material it rests on, and tilts Viktor’s world on his axis because since when does his father try to comfort him with touch? Yakov watches them and Viktor knows he made the right choice in coach because he doesn’t make the mistake of confusing their distance for apathy. “Kapochin, he died yesterday. He was an old dog. It was bound to happen eventually.”

His mother, equally awkward but having more time to practice performative emotion, “We’re very sorry this happened, Vitenka. We weren’t sure if it was the right time to tell you right before your competition, but we considered it and realized that we should tell you as soon as we could.” Her skin is softer and warming against the skin of his face, her smile is formed into that perfect curve calculated to comfort, but her eyes, awkward, well meaning, and full of a love she cannot say, is all Viktor needs. The awkward weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder, clumsy and heavy, are all Viktor needs.

He cries. Thirty seconds of tears stream down his face and of course Viktor Nikiforov is not an ugly crier, the other skaters think underneath their shock. Like watching ice melt.

He wipes his tears. Thanks his parents for telling him in the softest voice they’ve ever heard come out of Viktor’s mouth. He smiles up at his parents through his tears and his mouth is shaped like a shaky heart.

His competitors think Viktor Nikiforov is a monster made of ice and cold. His growth cannot be graphed as a steady line climbing upwards, but as a steep exponential curve that reaches past where others can see from the ground. The few skaters who have claimed victory over him know that they had only wrested those victory’s from Viktor’s hands, from Viktor’s teeth, because of their head start. Because of experience that Viktor doesn’t have. But they are starting to see flashes of white in their peripheral vision, feel his fingers brushing against their back, hear his frostbite laugh approaching closer and closer. Soon they will see his icicle smile as he passes them by and rushes ahead and they will know that it was only a matter of time.

But now they have a new reason to think Viktor Nikiforov is a monster. Here, in the way the tears stop. The way he wipes his face and walks away from the couple too beautiful to be real.

The way the music starts and he empties himself of everything but ice and cold and the story that needs to be told.  

The way he skates this program about joy. His mouth is shaped into a perfect half moon. Even the way his hair falls through the air conveys an ecstasy that most people have just barely touched and yet there it is, embodied the in his figure. In his jumps and spins and steps.

He is a monster because of the light in his eyes. Like the sun.

This is where people begin to realize.

Viktor Nikiforov is empty.

 

_…_

 

When he falls during his short program at Europeans, he doesn’t get back up. 

Yakov forces him to take the rest of the season off and Viktor can’t argue with that because contrary to popular belief, he’s not a complete moron. When Yakov tells him to take next season off too, the argument forming in Viktor’s throat dies when the doctor tells him either that or he never skates again.

And Viktor wants to skate forever.

So he goes along with their plans for him. He is forbidden from touching the ice that makes him. He goes back home to Yekaterinaburg and lives with white walls and crystal chandeliers while the finest physical therapists his parents can buy coax his body back into perfection.

The house, filled with 17th century antique furniture and portraits that belong in museums rather than homes that people supposedly live in, feels even emptier with Kapochin gone. For all the people in the house - Viktor, his mother, his father every once in awhile, the rotating staff of maids, butlers, and cooks- every sound echoes in the silence. Viktor can’t leave because the roads are too icy and he could fall - and there’s an irony there that angers him - so he stares at white walls he can’t empty himself of and tries to find something to do before he goes insane.

He plays around on the meticulously tuned piano that exists just for show and plays the few bars that he learned during his music elective at school. He catches himself trying to rearrange them into something he could skate to and slams his hands against the white and black keys and the practiced notes turn discordant when he remembers he can’t skate and won’t skate for a year.

He tries to distract himself. Goes into his mother’s art studio and tries to draw what he sees - white walls, crystal chandeliers, Yekaterinaburg at sunset -  in her paints and pastels, but he finds himself carving out routines and costumes out of the white canvas instead. He goes into his father’s office late at night and tries to study that hotels that had built his family, but all he can see are the places he has visited, the sights he has seen from the view in his hotel room windows in Turin, Tokyo, Beijing, The Hague.

He tries cooking. He doesn’t like to talk about it.

_(“Vitya, what are you doing here?” “Just trying to make stroganoff, Masha!” “Do you smell that, Vitya?” “If by ‘that’ you mean the gentle flames of the love that I am pouring into this beef, then yes!” “ You can’t pour flames. You’re mixing your metaphors. No, Vitya, that is smoke that I am smelling. Get away from there before you burn something. Your mother will take this as an excuse to remodel the kitchen and we won’t survive that again. Give me that! Give me that!”)_

The books he pulls from the library shelves are turn into stories that can only be told with his body, but his body can’t tell those stories so he puts every book down before he can finish a chapter. His iPod lays in his suitcase untouched because he can’t listen to music. He deliberately keeps the TV on the channel that shows Russian soap operas and only Russian soap operas. He’s had to blacklist words ‘ _Grand Prix Final’ ‘World Championship’ ‘Men’s Singles World Record.’_ On the days where he can’t help himself, he has to shut off his computer and hide it away where he can’t get to it because the thought of someone taking his titles, beating him to the podium, having the ice greet them like an old friend-

It sets him on fire. And not the good kind of fire. Not the “ _raging passion that goads you onto greater heights”_ fire but the _“blind rage, I want to rend my flesh from my bones, claw at my skin until I look as raw as I feel”_ fire. He wants to empty himself of this ugliness, but he can’t. He doesn’t know how, when he’s like this. Crippled and useless and stuck in white walls, looking up at crystal chandeliers.

Everything he touches turns into skating, but he can’t think about skating because it hurts more that his stupid broken ankle and the ache in his knees and the sharp twinge he feels race up his spine if he moves too far.

Viktor hasn’t even looked at anything that he couldn’t empty himself of in, in -

He doesn’t know the answer, but he knows that it is measured in years.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_Second._ **

 

He cuts his hair.

He’s alone in his apartment in St. Petersburg. The walls are white, but he’s covered them in everything he could. Magazine articles encouraging him to travel to Dubai, Sicily, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Kyoto, Manila. Pictures of foggy Saint Petersburg taken with the polaroid camera someone had given him for his birthday. Pages ripped out of books with words circled and lines highlighted. Sheet music for potential short programs stacked on top of each other and pinned next to pictures of abandoned houses next to wall paint swatches next to sketchy doodles of Kapochin and Yakov and the old man who hobbles down the street in front of his apartment every day at 5:09 AM exactly. Every inch of the wall is covered and nothing white shows through.

_(He gets a new apartment, later, and the walls are white and the lights hang from the ceiling and it seems he cannot empty himself of white walls and precarious light fixtures after all.)_

It looks like the house of a crazy person, he knows, but he is pretty enough to pass it off as a _charming_ eccentricity rather than the genuine madness he sometimes feels thrumming underneath his skin. His hands shake as he cuts his hair with steel scissors he bought for the occasion and he lets the chunks of hair fall around him at his feet because he think that, if someone were filming him, this would make a particularly compelling image. A haircut, Viktor knows, is a sign of rebirth. And like a phoenix rising from the ashes, a new Viktor Nikiforov will emerge from these strands of white, white, white hair.

And if he thinks that he’s being Georgi-levels of overdramatic then, well -

At least he’s self-aware.

Kapochin used to tug on his hair to get his attention.

When Viktor was tired and bitter and wanted to win more than he wanted to breath air, Kapochin let him cry into his soft fur. He licked tears off of his face and showed him more physical affection than his parents will give him in their lifetimes.

And when Viktor stepped on the ice, he emptied himself of everything. Of every smile and every tear and every ounce of love his precious friend ever gave him. He was left with white walls and crystal chandeliers and the (ultimately) meaningless story he had to tell.

He never wants to have to do that again.

So Viktor cuts his hair, to the horror of his fans. The idea that so many people mourn the loss of a few hundred strands of hair is baffling to him, though they don’t seem to mind as much when the pictures from the new photoshoot come out.

( _Yuuri admitted that he cried when Viktor cut his hair. Viktor laughed and laughed and wondered out loud whether or not he should grow it out again. Yuuri laughed and laughed, pushed his fringe away from his face, and said to him, and though the words are mean the eyes are not, that he doesn’t think Viktor can do that anymore, old man.)_

 

_…_

 

He stops trying to empty himself and starts trying to fill himself instead. 

When he’s twenty-two he finds it in himself to adopt another dog, not the purebred poodle his parents got for him when he was six, but a lovely little thing he finds at an animal shelter one day. He names her Makkachin and he loves her to distraction. They go on walks every day. He grooms her himself. He doesn’t know how to cook, he barely knows how to do his own laundry, and he avoids cleaning his apartment by being in it as little as possible, but he knows how to groom Makkachin’s fur so well that at least he has a back-up when he’s done with skating competitively.

(He only allows himself to think about that when he’s brushing his fingers through Makkachin’s soft fur and cutting off the little tufts of fur that stick out ~ _oh so cutely because everything Makkachin does is adorable and lovely, yes it is! Yes it is! Who’s a good girl?_ He allows himself to think about his retirement when it’s half a joke, alone in his pristine apartment with only his dog for company.) 

When he is not skating, he wanders. Sometimes when he’s supposed to be skating, he wanders. Yakov has learned that if Viktor Nikiforov doesn't step onto the ice at 10:00 AM exactly, he’s not going to at all. He’s walked through every inch of Saint Petersburg and knows it better than the house he grew up in.

( _He still doesn’t know where the maids kept the towels and he didn’t realize that his mother had a second art studio until he found her sitting at an easel, mixing paint on a palette and breaking Yuuri down into lines and colors as he stands posed on a podium in front of her. “Vitenka, tell me, is this the proper shade of brown for his eyes or do I need to add more red?” “Just a tad more, Mama.”)_

Viktor fills himself with the knowledge that the best coffee in Saint Petersburg is located two blocks up from a homeless shelter. He fills himself with their weary smiles and hope for the future and the careful gentleness and tries to exude whenever he walks passed them to visit the market the springs up every other Tuesday in the park eight streets west. The old women who sell their handmade scarves and sweaters call him Vit’ka and on the day before Valentine’s Day give him a sweater to give to his lover. He falls into their trap tells them he has no lover at the moment and realizes he was caught in the first place they begin showing him pictures of their grandchildren.

_(When he shows Yuuri this market, years later, they pile sweater after sweater on that poor boy and he accepts each with increasingly less grace as the knitted fabric in his arms grows.)_

He fills himself with the sound of the children who attend the elementary school five blocks away from the rink and the sound of their feet against pavement as they passed him on their walk home. With the way their older siblings look at them with irritation mixed with an irrepressible fondness. He fills himself with the stories of the talkative cab driver who immigrated from Afghanistan who has begun to recognize Viktor on sight but never remembers his name.

He goes to college because that is the one thing his father and mother wouldn’t let him refuse. He finishes his degree in business management like he was intended to at birth. He breezes through school when he has time to devote to it  and fills himself with the love he knows exists in his father’s demand, no matter how much he hated it at the time.

He tries not to burn through relationships like he did when he was a child. He tries to fill himself with a love that burns, but burns softly, but he can’t find it in himself to keep his lovers around. He fills himself with the their smiles and laughs, inside jokes, and how their skin feels against his hands and tongue, and then moves on.

 

_…_

 

His five year winning streak starts here. 

The change in him in noticeable. It’s not just the hair and not just in the way his programs are choreographed to emphasize the new broadness of his shoulders and the power and strength condensed in his lithe frame instead of the elfin quality of his face.

Judges, coaches, commentators, spectators, competitors, fans - their definition of perfection is once against made and remade around Viktor’s body and the way it moves as he is welcomed by the ice.

 _This is it,_ he realizes. _This is what was missing._ His skating is so much more when he is not so empty.

He travels. He fills himself with sunlight and tropical beaches and temporary friendships formed in spite of language barriers. He becomes more familiar with Barcelona, with Paris, with Beijing, with Tokyo, with Los Angeles, than the house he grew up in.

He fills himself with his strange friendship with Christophe Giacometti, who is less “boy running through the Swiss meadows” and more “man having an orgy in the Swiss meadows.” Well, Viktor is no stranger to reinventing himself, so he has no room to judge.

(Though a strange amount of...well, there’s no other way to say it, porn things happen around Chris. Poles perfect for strip teases only appear at the banquets Chris attends, nowhere else. Every pizza he orders is delivered by a person who is a) disproportionately attractive for their profession and b) down for a quickie. When people eat food with Chris, the taste is almost orgasmic and so are the moans the people let out. It’s a strange world Christophe Giacometti lives in and Viktor is lucky to know him.)

“You’re different now. I don’t know what it is, but one day, Viktor,” Chris’s face is flushed with whatever cheap alcohol they had found in the city after they had escaped the banquet and he sprawls over the couch in Viktor’s hotel room in a pose that in unintentionally seductive (Or is intentional? Viktor’s only 87% sure that those porn things that happen to Chris are not on purpose. When he asks, all he gets in response is a sparkling wink.) “You’re going to be looking up at me on that podium.”

Viktor equally flushed, equally sprawled, and trying to balance his can of beer on this forehead. “I’m looking forward to it,” he says and Viktor surprises himself with how hollow those words are. He knows he sounds friendly and challenging in a way that will motivate Christophe, but he knows that his words are empty. He thought he was done with this emptiness.

Had he really become so arrogant so soon? To doubt a peer could reach him?

But Viktor felt untouchable. He had stormed through the Grand Prix Series like a whirlwind and had taken Europeans and now the World Championships in the same way. He had remade himself into something that no one else can hope to reach.

_(But they tried. My God, they tried. Viktor will never really know just how much. A silver medal may be as good as gold in the Nikiforov Era, but skaters are hungry. They need gold.)_

He thinks of Chris’s shaky quad lutz that he can’t land and won’t land for another two years, his unpolished salchow, the traces of sloppiness left in his spins, and - rather meanly, Viktor admits in the corner of his mind that he likes to ignore -  he thinks that Chris is the arrogant one, to assume that he can beat Viktor on this stage. He doesn’t know what Viktor’s had to do to get to this point.

 _Chris is your friend,_ Viktor thinks savagely as he reaches up to grab the empty can of beer so he can crush it in his hands, _He’s your friend and a beautiful skater. He’s won Worlds last season and he can do it again. It’s not unreasonable to think he could beat you. He’s your_ friend.

Empty thoughts too now, apparently.

Chris is suddenly on him and his mouth tastes like the cheapest French alcohol they could find and whatever they had eaten at that hole-in-the-wall restaurant and the hor d'oeuvres the shoved into their faces before they slipped out of the banquet. They know each other well enough that this doesn’t mean anything more than the sensation of skin against skin. Viktor ignores the emptiness he thought he had abandoned and fills himself with this instead.

 

_…_

 

Viktor is twenty five when he runs out of space for his medals and trophies in his apartment in Saint Petersberg and is twenty five when the feeling he gets when he looks on his accomplishments becomes tinged with something bitter.

When he invites old friends and casual acquaintances, people who couldn’t be further away from skating if they tried, over to his apartment with white walls, all they can do is ask where each medal came from, what he did to earn gold, what it feels like to be a champion and it gets tiring.

When he invites rinkmates and competitors, he sees admiration and bitterness - the ratio of one to the other dependant on age -  in their faces and a hunger in his eyes he realizes he hasn’t felt in a longer time. He’s no longer surprising himself. How much longer can he surprise others? How much longer will he be able to stay on the ice, then?

_(He doesn’t think he’s ever surprised his parents in his entire life.)_

He comes to hate these displays of victory. Of the little reminders of what it took for him to get here. He packs his bronzes and silvers and golds up and sends them to his parents in Yekaterinaberg. They will display a few of them very tastefully and they prefer the look of the silver over the gold. His latest gold is put in a place of pride on the mantle underneath their portrait and they allow the silver he won when Kapochin died to gather dust in the box Viktor had sent it in.

An interviewer asks him after his fourth consecutive win at the Grand Prix Final what he likes to do outside of skating and for one terrifying moment his mind goes blank.

“I like to wander around, to tell the truth. It’s drives my coach crazy.” Viktor laughs and there’s something calculated in the way he rubs his hand against the back of his neck, messing his hair just so. “I just walk around and explore my neighborhood with my dog -”

“Makkachin,” The interviewer supplies helpfully. Viktor laughs and tries not to feel intruded upon. He knows his constant posts on social media allows voyeurs into his life, but those voyeurs are invited in on his terms. They see what he wants them to see. He offers it freely. They feel like they know him, like they are close friends, and he let’s them feel that because there is an energy in a crowd that loves him that fills him up.

But it gets tiring. After so many years of this, he’s finally tired.

“Yes, Makkachin, my lovely girl. It’s nice to have time for just the two of us. Though, I do get recognized in the streets every so often. But I love my fans and I’m not the type to turn down a selfie.” He winks, practiced, and he sees the interviewer swoon and hears two others in a place he can’t see.

“Now, Viktor, you’re on the older end of skaters competing at this level,” the interviewer says once she controls her blush, “I’m not going to sugarcoat this question because I respect you more than that,” She takes a deep breath, because this is being broadcast live and the news is has learned from reality tv that suspense and spectacle is the only form of communication that matters.

He knows the question she is about to ask before she asks it because he is briefed on every question before the interview begins. That why he knows how he is going to answer this question before she asks it because he’s had time to craft a truth. Or a lie. One of the two.

“Have you put any thought into retirement?”

“Why? He asks, his voice expertly drenched in charm. “Are you all so eager to be rid of me?” He thinks it’s his pout that convinces the interviewer to ply him with reassurances, _No, of course not. We love you, the ice loves you, your body is poetry in motion etcetera etcetera._

Viktor laughs. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, though the flattery is appreciated” another wink, another swoon. Then he sighs, resigned and practiced, “I’d be a fool to not have thought about it before, though my coach thinks I’m a fool regardless,” he chuckles and the interview giggles with him, “But,” and he pauses, because he also knows that suspense and spectacle are the only things that matter.

“But?”

“I don’t mean to brag, but I’m on a four year gold streak.” He puts on a smile of well-earned confidence, “Does it look like I’m going to be retiring any time soon?”

The interviewer laughs, then moves on to the next question about his love life. This is easier to answer.

Twitter notices before any journalists do.

 

 **CONGRATS VITYA <333** @nikiforloves   

@nbc @vnikiforov Wait, did he actually answer the question tho???????? #victornikiforov #goldstreak #retirement #excusemewtf

 

There have been rumors of his retirement since he turned twenty three and Kazuhiro Hanabusa retires this year at twenty four so of course people would start speculating whether the older competitors are thinking of leaving as well. So this isn’t the first time that niche section of the internet has been thrown into despair over speculation of Viktor’s inevitable retirement, but this is the first time the speculation begins because of something Viktor actually said. Or actually didn’t say, rather, 

“I don’t actually mean to retire, Yakov.” Viktor snaps, tired of this lecture and tired of the sight of the ice for today and just tired. “What else do I have?”

This shuts up Yakov’s lecture and shuts down Viktor’s face. In that second of silence Viktor allows himself to check if anyone else heard him, especially the Plisetsky kid that Yakov had recently taken on. Make no mistake. The boy looks like an angel, but he’s actually some kind of demon that anchors itself to this world with cats and horrible leopard print fabric. Who let that child dress himself, honestly?

And he likes to yell. A lot. Especially at Viktor who despite it all feels curiously fond of the brat.

“Vitya…” Yakov starts and his gruffness has been toned down to his version of soft that grates against the sharp edges that Viktor hasn’t bothered to sand down into something presentable today.  

“I’m taking tomorrow off.” Viktor grabs his stuff and exits into the night. He can hear Plisetsky yelling the background and he fills himself with that.

He fills himself with the bite of cold air against his skin as he walks home from the rink. He fills himself with the sound of dogs barking at their owners and the old songs played on radios from open windows. He fills himself with the smell of coffee hanging in the air and with the crude chalk drawing of a penis over a rough chalk drawing of a bird or a house of an unholy combination of the two.

He fills himself with these things until he unlocks his front door and Makkachin leaps up at him and licks at his face as Viktor drops to the floor and Viktor fills himself with this feeling as he tries to control his breathing.

He thought he had fixed this. Fixed the emptiness that had defined him for years and filled it with sunlight and laughter and wine and people and experiences. With watching performances at the Bolshoi ballet and drunken summertime hookups in Lyon and hole-in-the-wall bakeries in Nagoya and lost kittens in Beijing. And he thinks he is fulfilled until he realizes that, still, everything is for his skating, skating, skating and that’s why when the interviewer asked him what he does outside of skating his mind was empty.  

Because he is empty. Blank. White walls and crystal chandeliers.  

He tries and tries, but nothing changes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_Third._ **

 

He starts to feel his exhaustion in his blood, not just his muscles and bones. He’s rebuilt himself from the ground up since that interview and his programs become more honest. 

Uncomfortably so.

He skates to songs about loneliness and disconnection, of longing and bright stars being used up until their light grows dim and dies. Last year’s programs were always tinged with hope, but this year’s programs are a cry for help people pretend not to hear. His programs never meant anything before, not really, why would they start now?

He’s twenty seven and feels ancient and he has emptied himself of everything he has to give.

He’s thinking of taking a break.

He needs to take a break. It’s gotten to the point that he can’t deny to himself that he’s burnt out and Makkachin is getting old and he can’t have another Kapochin. The plans become half formed in his mind and he resolves to talk to Yakov about it after the banquet so he can have a concrete plan by Worlds in April.

He talks to Yuri because he sees himself in his devotion to skating and his single minded drive to win. It’s like looking back through time, but not, because Yuri Plisetsky is not made of white walls and calculated everything. He’s made of pirozkhis and a mother and father who aren’t too emotionally stunted to tell him that they love him and of a grandfather who loves him above all else and a cat who hates everyone but Yuri and his little sisters that he screams at over Skype because he shows his love by shouting. Or that’s what Viktor tells himself anyway.

He feels someone staring at him and sees an Asian boy...man? He’s got a bit of a baby face so Viktor’s not 100% certain. Viktor thinks that man looks slightly familiar. A journalist maybe? A photographer? Maybe just a fan. Viktor offers the man a photo because that what everyone who stares at him wants.

“Commemorative photo?” He asks with a calculated smile and a calculated wink. “Sure!” The man gives Viktor a look he can’t quite identify and then.

And then-

He walks away.

That’s never happened before.

 

_..._

 

When Viktor woke up that morning, he expected certain things.

He expected to have to perform. First on ice and then in front of others. He expected to have to go to the banquet and wear his bespoke suit that makes him look more and more like his father the more Viktor sees himself in it. He expected, however arrogantly though at this point it’s mostly down to statistics, to win his fifth consecutive gold at the Grand Prix Final.

He never expected Yuuri Katsuki.

He doesn’t think he ever could.

 _A journalist? A photographer? Just a fan?_ Viktor scolds himself. _Yuuri Katsuki is a skater, a dancer. A miracle._

Viktor makes himself with the image of the Dance Battle of the Yuris, as it will be called as it lives on in history. He makes himself with the feeling of Yuuri’s leg wrapped around Viktor’s neck pulling him closer as Yuuri curls his body around the stripper pole that Christophe had summoned with his glorious presence. He makes himself with the sensation of Yuuri’s arm wrapped around his waist. The look in his eyes as he dips Viktor and the expression he knows his own face must have made when Yuuri asked him to be his coach. Makes himself with the laughter in his ear and the breath close enough to mingle with his own. With the awful tie wrapped around Yuuri’s head and the adorable baby fat clinging to Yuuri’s cheeks and the pictures of Vicchan Yuuri shows him on his phone.

He named his dog after Viktor! He makes himself with how adorable that is.

He makes himself with the feeling of this night. He makes himself with the sight of Christophe finally (finally!) seducing that physical therapist who’s on standby on, for some reason, all of the competitions Christophe is in. He makes himself with the sight of Yuri, outraged and hissing, acting like the child he doesn’t want to let himself be.

He makes himself with the sight of that Italian skater almost foaming at the mouth to protect his sister’s eyes once the clothes starting flying off. He makes himself with the way the sister fights her brother at every turn. He makes himself with Mila’s laugh and the brightness of her blue eyes as she watches the chaos unfold and he makes himself with the knowledge that she’s going to have blackmail on all of them forever.

He makes himself with the sight of Yuuri asleep in this bed that Viktor is kneeling in front of.

He’ll have a killer hangover tomorrow, Viktor is sure. No one ever got a final count on the amount of champagne he drank, but the final consensus is somewhere between “10 - Too Much, Holy God, How Is He Not Dead?” His coach, Cialdini, was knocked out cold after eight glasses of champagne and whatever was in the flask he smuggled in his jacket so Viktor was appointed the sacred duty of making sure Yuuri doesn’t die in his sleep.

Viktor holds his chin in his hands and rests his elbows on the soft bed and makes himself in the way the street lights dance on Yuuri’s face through the curtains. Viktor thinks about drawing them closed, but that would been getting up and looking away from this wonderful, impossible man. Viktor catches sight of himself in the mirror across from Yuuri’s hotel bed and sees that his smile is shaped like a heart.

He wants to touch Yuuri, cup his cheeks in his hand and tilt his face towards Viktor. But he doesn’t want to risk waking him up so Viktor makes himself with the feeling wanting to touch. He wants to press his lips against Yuuri’s and by god was Yuuri trying to do the same while he was awake, but Yuuri is unbelievably drunk and it wouldn’t be appropriate so Viktor makes himself with the feeling of wanting to kiss. Viktor wants to take off his jacket and shoes and lie down next to Yuuri and just- watch him sleep. But he doesn’t, so he makes himself with the feeling of wanting to know what it would be like to lie down and sleep next to Yuuri Katsuki.

Something in him was erased and rewritten, demolished and rebuilt, that night. He doesn’t sleep and it feels mildly creepy to just watch Yuuri sleep all night, but around 5:00 AM Yuuri wakes up, coughing and sputtering, and he rushes to the bathroom in a blind panic, Viktor following close behind him. Yuuri shoves his head into the toilet and Viktor grabs a bottle of water. He gets down next to Yuuri and rubs his back in slow, hopefully comforting circles and he makes himself with the desire to comfort Yuuri. To care for him. And the feeling is frightening and unfamiliar, but he is made with it anyway.  

Once Yuuri is finished heaving, he crawls back into bed with Viktor’s help and Viktor wipes his face with a wet towel. And he should feel disgusted but all he is is fond. He feels so soft. Like powdered snow.  

Viktor leaves around 8 AM and comes back barely an hour later with a cup of coffee, a chocolate chip muffin, and a bottle of aspirin to see the cleaning staff emptying the room of everything that had happened last night and Viktor makes himself with this feeling too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_Coda._ **

 

These are the things that Viktor has made and remade himself with:

Hasetsu. The way it sleeps and the way its steady breathing can be felt in the sea gulls and saltwater air. The restless energy Viktor can sense in waves crashing against the shore and the people who call it home. He wonders what it would take to wake it up.

The way he knows this town better than the house he grew up in. Better than Barcelona, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Los Angeles. His halting and hesitant attempts to speak with the locals - Chiyo- _obaasan_ and Keiji- _ojisan_ and Sumire- _chan_ \- and the way Viktor’s never let himself be halting and hesitant before.

The way he starts to help Yuuko with skating lessons while Yuuri is off with Minako. The way the kids look up at him with eyes too big for their heads and smiles too big for Viktor’s heart. He makes himself with the way he knows that Axel, Lutz, and Loop sneak into his room at Yu-Topia sometimes and look for things of his that they can sell on Sk8-Bay. He makes himself with how terrified he is of what they will grow up to become and remakes himself with the way he wants to be there to see them when the do.

He makes himself with the Sunday nights he spends with Toshiya-san, screaming at the TV in Japanese and Russian as Sagan Tosu misses _another_ easy shot because they don’t need a common language to share this. He remakes himself with the tone of Hiroko-san’s voice when she calls him Vicchan and how she brings him extra blankets at night and the look in her eye, hand pressed against a plump cheek, when she looks at him and her son. He makes himself with the quiet moments he shares with Mari, eyes laughing at how obvious his love is and how oblivious her brother is, and the way she teases him like he’s her brother already.

He makes himself with the way Yurio Skypes with Yuuko every week while she’s at Ice Castle and the way he hisses, angry and secretly fond (Viktor is sure), when he spots Viktor or Yuuri or Viktor _and_ Yuuri in the background. He makes himself with how Yurio calls Yuuri _katsudon_ instead of _pig._ He makes himself with the way Mila texts him for advice now, rather than feeling that Viktor is too distant to bother. He makes himself with Georgi’s overdramatics and endless quest for love. He makes himself in the way he can see Yakov and Lilia reconciling, repaired but not restored. He makes himself in the way he’s closer to his rinkmates now more than ever even though there’s 7,000+ kilometers separating them.

He remakes himself with the music that composes Yuuri’s body and the music that is composed by it in turn. He remakes himself with Yuuri’s soft laugh and the way sunset dipped light plays on Yuuri’s face and the way moonlight makes his skin glow and the way starlight is reflected in his eyes. He remakes himself with the line of Yuuri’s body as he skates and the way color rises to his cheeks.

He remakes himself with late night movie marathons and the stories Yuuri murmurs when Viktor can’t sleep and the choreography Viktor traces on Yuuri’s skin. He remakes himself with the way Yuuri looks in the mornings and the way Yuuri looks like at night and the way Yuuri looks when he thinks no one looking. He remakes himself with _On Love: Agape_ and _On Love: Eros_ and _Yuri on Ice_ and the way _Stammi Vicino_ is remade along with him.

He remakes himself with how he’s not empty of anything anymore. He searches for new things, new food, new people, new shades of the sunset and sunrise that he’s never seen before, but he doesn’t need them to fill whatever cracks that made him. He has everything he needs now, curled against him and breathing softly, looking beautiful as he dreams.

_(This is the thing that makes Viktor that can never be unmade: The love that remains unsaid.)_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from a line in stammi vicino "this story that makes no sense" 
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://www.eunoise.tumblr.com)


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